| Tao Te Ching, with its profound philosophical spirit and succinct language style, is praised as a philosophical poem and gains diversity of audiences both at home and abroad. Over 700 commentaries on Tao Te Ching have been come out in China through more than 2,500 years, and the more are constantly emerging. In English world, over 130 different renditions of Tao Te Ching have been published, not to mention that in other European languages. It has become the most popular and often translated text compared to other Chinese classics in western countries.It is no doubt that Tao Te Ching's translation and transmission is a great success for transmitting Chinese Taoism to the English world, but besides Taoism, Chinese culture still concludes diversity of other cultures such as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Legalism and so on which ask for transmission as well. Therefore, with the further development of cultural diversity, significant it is of how to learn from Tao Te Ching's success to study the other English Translation of Chinese Classics (ETCC), so as to make our Chinese culture successfully transmitted and widely accepted in English world. This is the initial motive of the author to choose the topic of Tao Te Ching's translation and transmission in English world.Moreover, the previous studies mainly focused on the comparison of different translations at linguistic level, or pointed out the different skills or strategies adopted in these translations, but the cross-cultural features are seldom concerned.For compensation, this thesis adopts a new cultural transmission theory—memetics: an evolutionary theory about human culture which studies the evolutionary models of information transfer based on the concept of the meme (a unit of cultural transmission)—to depict a macro diachronic three-phase process of Tao Te Ching's translation and transmission in English world from 1868 till the present. It is hoped to discover some principles of Tao Te Ching's successful translation and transmission so as to draw reference for that of other Chinese classics. The research shows that Tao Te Ching's translation and transmission follows the rule of cultural evolution, so it can adapt to the new dynamic cultural environments and come out different translations respondent to different periods. Some of the translations become closer to the original, although no one is completely correspondent. So there is a continuing way to go for fulfilling the ultimate goal of Taoist memes: the successive transmission from one person to the others till the intact features are replicated, or cultural transmission is a continuous process in which the original features of Chinese culture will be gradually uncovered in English world.This paper consists of five chapters:Chapter One is a brief introduction to the research objective and significance, the main idea and structure of the thesis.Chapter Two is a literature review which introduces the background information of Laozi and his Tao Te Ching, including its achievements and significance, English translation and previous studies on it both at home and abroad.Chapter Three offers a theoretical framework to introduce the basic theory of biological evolution and cultural evolution, and the mechanism of memetics, including the definition of memes, the ways of meme transmission and the process and criteria of the successful meme transmission. Moreover, it points out the natural relationship between memetics and translation, memetics and ETCC; namely, ETCC can be taken as an intercultural activity to transmit Chinese memes to the English world, so it is significant to apply memetics, a cultural transmission theory, to study the translation and transmission of Chinese classics.Chapter Four is an attempt to apply memetics to Tao Te Ching's translation and transmission in English world. It depicts a schema and a three-phase translating and transmitting process of Tao Te Ching from the memetic point of view. It offers a detailed analysis of different features, principles and strategies which are adopted in different phases of transmission, including the analysis and research of the translations of George Alexander, James Legge and Paul Carus in the initial phase, Arthur Waley, D.C.Lau and Wing-tsit Chan, Giafu Feng and Jane English in the second phase, Robert Henricks, Michael LaFargue and Stephen Mitchell and so on in the third phase.Chapter Five draws a conclusion that Taoist memes can make variations to fit the dynamic cultural environments, so they can replicate themselves successfully in different periods and among different groups of people. Moreover, such a replication comes to a tendency that the original meaning or the intact traits of Taoist memes are going to be uncovered in English world little by little. At last, it is hoped that the memetic study on Tao Te Ching can be applied to study other Chinese classics so as to make our Chinese culture widely transmitted and accepted in the world.
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